Weekly K-Pop Music Chart 2012 – August Week 2

Psy stays strong and repeats as No. 1 with “Gangnam Style”. This song has an even better score than last week. “Gangnam Style” is becoming the most popular K-Pop songs so far this year. Its popularity is spreading quickly outside of Korea, with even CNN reporting about this song. The music video of “Gangnam Style” has surpassed 23 millions views on Youtube in just three weeks of release, breaking the record held by Girls’ Generation’s “The Boys”. In addition, Psy will soon release a sequel of “Gangnam Style” and there are rumors that Justin Bieber will be featured in part 2 of this song. Stay tune.

The top three songs are the same as last week, as Sistar’s “Loving U” and 2NE1’s “I Love You” managed to hold on to the second and third spots respectively. But their scores are quite far behind “Gangnam Style”.

There are four new songs in the top 10 this week. Moving up eight spots to No. 4 is the consensus top TV network music show song of this week – Beast’s “Beautiful Night”. This is the title song of Beast’s 5th mini-album “Midnight Sun”. “Beautiful Night” is a powerful synth pop number that is different from the group’s previous beat-heavy dance tracks. For sure “Beautiful Night” will be the top challenger for No. 1 next week.

Another potential future chart topper is at No. 5. BoA’s self written new song “Only One” moves up six spots to the top five this week. This is the title song of BoA’s 7th album. This mid-tempo song is very different from BoA’s usual dance beat style. It shows the singer’s maturity in music.

The biggest mover of the week is at No. 8, where 4men’s Shin Yong Jae has this first solo top 10 hit “Again And Again”, moving up 37 big spots this week. Shin Yong Jae has previous performed songs for drama OSTs but this is coming from his first solo mini-album “24”. “Again And Again” is is about having feelings for a woman no matter how hard he tries not to.

The last new song in the top 10 this week is at No. 9. It is a collaboration effort by artists from LOEN Entertainment. Together they released a mini-album titled “LOEN Tree Summer Story”. The title song “Sea Of Moonlight” paired IU with upcoming girl group Fiestar, who are debuting soon. The song has a very summery feel to it with retro 80’s synth pop sounds. There is another song from this album on our chart this week. That is Ga In and Ra.D’s “Take Out” at No. 26.

Comment:Miss A was No. 1 at this week in both of the last two years. But we are going back one more year back to 2009, the year where many of today’s biggest K-Pop groups debuted. None of them is bigger than 2NE1. The female quartet from YG Entertainment has been in training for many years and finally made their long awaited debut in the summer of 2009. When they first stepped on to the stage to perform their debut song “Fire”, fans were all amazed that they already performed like a veteran artist. “I Don’t Care” is their first No. 1 song. Each year, 2NE1 is coming back with two different style of songs, either hardcore hip-hop tracks with the style of “Fire” and “Clap Your Hands”, or more listener friendly R&B ballads like “I Don’t Care”, “Ugly”, and their recent chart topping hit “I Love You”, giving fans many choices.

About the Soompi Music Chart:

Soompi Music Chart is unlike any other music charts or television rankings. It takes into account rankings by various major music charts in Korea and airplays of each song, making it an unbiased and objective tally of what’s going on in the world of K-pop. Our chart is composed of the following sources: